Tax expenditures are preferential tax treatments granted to specific individuals or categories of households which aim at achieving social and economic goals - poverty and inequality reduction, and employment promotion, among others. Tax expenditures are widely used by EU Member States. However,...

The need for more comprehensive and integrated data on individual well-being is widely recognised. In order to identify better measures of economic performance in a complex economy and thus going Beyond GDP, Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi (2009) recommend to consider income, consumption and wealth...

Policy discussions on pension systems generally focus on their sustainability and design, including retirement age, income reference and contributory period while relative little attention is devoted to the tax treatment of pension contributions and pension benefits. However, tax expenditures -...

This paper aims to explore how housing allowances and mortgage interest tax relief have evolved in recent years, against the background of falling disposable incomes and rising housing costs. The analysis focuses on seven EU countries (Greece, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden and...

Western countries' income tax systems exempt the return from investing in owner-occupied housing. Returns from other investments are instead taxed, thus distorting households’ portfolio choices, although it is argued that housing property taxation might act as a counterbalance. Based on data...

We explore the prospects for using the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) dataset as an underlying micro-database for the EU taxbenefit model, EUROMOD. This will allow expanding the policy domains currently covered in EUROMOD with dimensions like wealth taxation,...

The financial and economic crisis which started in the late 2000s and the fiscal consolidation measures to counter the subsequent government budget deficits have an impact on household income distribution and macroeconomic recovery. We consider the austerity measures in relation to their...

This paper presents baseline results from the latest version of EUROMOD (version G2.1), the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU. First, we briefly report the process of updating EUROMOD. We then present indicators for income inequality and risk of poverty using EUROMOD and discuss the...

Redistribution is usually understood in terms of income; as a way to rank individuals as well as to determine taxable capacity or benefit eligibility. Yet, it is increasingly argued that more prominence should be given to the joint distribution of income and wealth and interest into the taxation...